Mum of toddler cut by glass says culprit needs to 'grow up'
A FAMILY holiday turned into a nightmare for mother of three Roxanne Frischling when her three-year-old son cut his foot on a 3cm piece of glass while swimming in a local hotel pool.
"My son (Raevin Boyd) had only just got in the shallow end of the pool on the Saturday morning with his floaties and my sister and I were putting some towels on the bench and noticed a chunk of glass on the concrete," she said.
"As we went to pick it (my son) started screaming and he was standing there with his foot out of the water.
"We yelled at the other kids to get out and he's screaming and crying and there's blood pouring out."
After being handed a tea towel by her brother, Ms Frischling raced her son to the hospital.
"The kids had a swim on Friday afternoon and everything was fine then at 9pm they had another swim an were fine but the next morning at about 8am they wanted to go for another swim," Ms Frischling said.
"All of (Raevin's) cousins were in the pool so there were about nine kids in there all together."
It was the early morning swim which left Raevin refusing to walk for four days and has only just started walking flat on his feet nearly two weeks on.
Despite deciding to stay for the remainder of their holiday, activities such as visiting WetSide water park, the beach and the pool were nearly impossible.
White Crest Luxury Apartment's manager, Robert Cheek, offered the family a stroller to use for the day and assisted the family as best he could - something Ms Frischling said she was grateful for.
Mr Cheek said after being made aware of the incident he was required to drain, dry, clean and refill the pool which cost him about $3000 and shut the pool for five days.
While assessing CCTV footage from the night Mr Cheek noticed a person walk past the hotel and toss a glass Corona bottle over the fence.
"When things like this happen it damages the reputation of Hervey Bay," Mr Cheek said.
Hervey Bay Chamber of Commerce president, Sandra Holebrook, echoed Mr Cheek's comments saying it tainted the town.
However, this is not the first instance such an incident has happened.
"I've heard a few stories of young groups of people who do this as a joke and I know some hotels who have had to deal with it," she said.
"It's a terrible thing to happen to anyone on holidays and children go in the pools all the time so it affects those younger children quite often."
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She said such issues were costly to hotel owners.
"As a community we should be trying to not have this stuff happen and it has a great cost on the business and there's lots of hidden costs," she said.
"You've got this one case in the newspaper but there's other cases too so it's not new and it's something the community should be frowning on."
As for Raevin, Ms Frischling said he was doing well but had a message for the culprit.
"Use your common sense and grow up," she said.
"I don't understand how they think they can do something like that."
